Just Because

Over the years, I frequently would ask friends for a list of the books that have touched them or affected them deeply. It has been a wonderful exploration. Often, I would see the intimate details of their personalities, their most sacred psychology, by exploring the works they loved.

Just for fun, I have listed below some of the books that shaped or inspired me. These are the works that bent my way of thinking, always making it more expansive, always toward the fresh and beautiful. Oh, how difficult it has been to narrow this list! There are certainly works I have forgotten, and it will continue to evolve. (Note: I have included links to each of the works as well. If you buy them here, I’ll get a few pennies that will help offset the cost of maintaining my site.)

Here are a few books I think about on a daily basis. Enjoy!

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. While Zorba is not a particularly politically correct character, this book is about a love and zest for life. Action vs. contemplation. Nietzsche vs. Buddha. There is so much here, that is so rich.

Report to Greco by Nikos Kazantzakis. Kazantzakis’s intellectual, spiritual and poetic autobiography. Rather than a log of dates, places or events, it is the author’s metaphysical journey through Jesus, Buddha, Lenin, Odysseus, Nietzsche and back again to every one of us, desperately committed to our own miraculous human project.

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America by Daniel Boorstin. It continues to amaze me how relevant this 1962 classic continues to be. Before the 24 hour “news” cycle, Boorstin alerted us to “pseudo-events” (e.g., press conferences, presidential debates), those activities and happenings manufactured solely in order to be reported. Before reality shows and social media stars, Boorstin lamented that we have exchanged our heroes for “celebrities”, those persons who known for their “well-knownness.” Since then, Boorstin’s prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any reader who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.

Song of Myself – Walt Whitman’s “Song of myself” is a celebration of the beauty and sacredness all around us, especially in other people. Toward the end of the poem, Whitman speaks directly to the reader:

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

And he ends with:

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

In the first edition of the poem (1855), this last line was unpunctuated, as if dangling, waiting for the reader to respond. Scholars disagree about whether this was deliberate. But either way, Whitman ends with a invitation to the reader: How are you going to approach this world that is so filled with the crass and dirty and unfair and beautiful? To a large extent, my book Mud and Dreams, is my response to Whitman’s call.

The Other by Ryszard Kapuściński. Every day we come into contact with others, strange and unknown, or foreign to us. What does our encounter with “Other” ask of us? What does it say about who we are? Using compelling prose, Kapuściński draws upon the works of Emmanuel Levinas to paint a beautiful ethic for how we are to live in the world, all the more relevant now, in a world of border walls, immigration and globalization.

God in Search of Man. In this work of spiritual audacity, Abraham Joshua Heschel shocks the reader out of his complacency and awakens him to that spiritual dimension fading from contemporary consciousness. In addition to the detailed discussions on themes such as “Awe,” “Wonder,” and the problem of evil, Heschel provides a model of a religion that is rooted in humanity’s lived experience. For Heschel, who lived his faith through action, the message of the prophets is that God needs us in some way. He needs us to take care of the widows and orphans and downtrodden.

In addition to these works, there were many, many more, that touched me deeply, including: